Centennial Hall construction under way

By SCOTT WALDMAN Staff writer

Published
12:01 am EDT, Thursday, June 23, 2011

The College of Saint Rose has officially started the construction of its new, controversial dorm project.

The $17.5 million building will house up to 224 juniors and seniors in two- and four-person furnished apartments and is expected to be finished in about a year. It will contain a convenience store, a "Burger Studio" cafe, study rooms and laundry facilities. It is also the latest expansion of a campus that has grown tremendously under the leadership of President Mark Sullivan.

It will be called Centennial Hall, a nod to the school's 100th anniversary, which will be celebrated in 2020.

"Centennial Hall will provide students with the tangible amenities they want and the college with one big intangible gift: hundreds of students who can actively take part in college life days, nights and weekends, then cross the street and be home," Sullivan said in a statement. Though some neighbors complained because of the size of the parking lot, and because a number of homes were torn down to accommodate its construction, the new dorm is yet another step in the evolution of the campus, which is trying to grow in an urban neighborhood.

The school has transformed the Madison Avenue corridor around its campus in recent years with the construction of a new education school, an arts building and a communications center. Saint Rose is more than halfway through its $5 million fundraising goal for a new business school.

Cynthia Collins, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, is sending dangerous bacteria up with the astronauts. Collins' experiments, called Micro-2A, will examine the way microgravity changes the way dangerous bacteria grows and how it forms colonies called biofilms that are difficult to kill.

The research has important implications for protecting astronauts while they are in space in enclosed and difficult to clean spaces, according to the school. It could have significant implications for space missions particularly as they go further from Earth. It can be used to fight bacterial infections such as staph, food poisoning, sepsis, and pneumonia.

The historic mission will ground the Atlantis shuttle, which had its first shuttle launch in 1985. The shuttle will launch on July 8.